Ancient evidence suggests a new twist in how we all got here.

Early evolution of life as we know it may have depended on DNA’s ability to absorb UV light. This insight into the early moments of life on Earth comes from research published today in the journal BMC ...

Explaining isolated steps on the road from simple chemicals to complex living organisms is not enough. Looking at the big picture could help to bridge rifts in this fractured research field. The ...

A research team investigated how the emergence of the first living systems from inert geological materials happened on the Earth, more than 3.5 billion years ago. Scientists found that by mixing ...

Scientists are making a case for adjusting our understanding of how exactly genes first emerged. For a while, there’s been a consensus about the order in which the building-block amino acids were ...

In a new peer reviewed analysis, scientists quantify amino acids before and after our “last universal common ancestor.” The last universal common ancestor is the single life form that branched into ...